A Simple Method for Predicting Muzzle Brake Effectiveness and Baffle-Surface Pressure

Abstract : The objective of this work is to produce a simple method for calculating load distributions on muzzle brake baffles during the firing process. With the load distribution known, the muzzle-brake effectiveness expression can be obtained and easily evaluated. The approach is to use a simple model for the muzzle-jet flow to predict the pressure on the baffle. The baffle is located in the supersonic jet core during much of the gun-exhaust cycle. This impinging flow onto the baffles is approximated by adopting a source flow model. Newtonian theory is used to predict the resulting pressures on the baffles. The theoretical results compare well with previous published experimental results. With this model, brake-effectiveness variation with parameter changes can be simply obtained for most gun systems.